Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship

Matching city-level and province-level GDP data with firm headquarters’ locations for a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2015, we find that firm locations are positively and significantly associated with firm innovation. In addition, firms with higher government grants have higher R&D inputs. The gap between firms’ innovation performance in ordinary cities and in non-ordinary cities is not significant in the eastern region; however, the gap is significant in the central and western regions of China. Finally, we use firm relocation to tackle the endogeneity issue and find that firms relocated to cities with larger size of economy are associated with higher innovation performance.

The informal sector is increasingly recognized in terms of its entrepreneurial potential. However there is a general lack of empirical research on small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) effectiveness in the informal economy in Africa. Recognizing this research gap, this article investigates entrepreneurial enabling factors in the South African township context to determine their impact on SMME’s performance. Township-based SMMEs in South Africa’s largest province, Gauteng, are surveyed and hypotheses are tested with correlation and regression analyses. Results indicate that access to finance and markets, institutional support, and skill and competency development are all significant predictors of enterprise performance. Empirical investigations in under-researched African contexts are important to highlight differences in enabling factors when compared to western contexts. In South African townships, which are plagued by high inequality, poverty, high unemployment and several other socio-economic challenges, it is an important policy which takes into account the variety of enabling environment factors that impact enterprise performance.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically four competing theories that variously explain informal sector entrepreneurship as a traditional activity that has not yet been incorporated into the modern system (modernization theory), a form of production integral to contemporary capitalism conducted by marginalized population groups as a survival strategy (structuralist theory), a voluntarily chosen endeavor and popular reaction to excessive regulation by the state (neo$-$liberal theory) or a voluntarily chosen practice conducted for social, redistributive, political resistance or identity reasons (post-structuralist theory). Reporting the results of face$-$to$-$face interviews with 215 informal entrepreneurs in Zamfara, a tropical region in Nigeria, the finding is that no one theory is universally valid. Instead, each theory is valid in relation to different groups of entrepreneur and only by combining all of them can a finer-grained and more nuanced explanation of the complex and heterogeneous character of informal sector entrepreneurship be achieved.

Regulations and institutions influence entrepreneurship. This paper investigates whether government regulations and finance institutions help or hinder entrepreneurial performance at the small firm level in Yaoundé and Douala, Cameroon. Performance is examined in terms of growth in sales revenue, profits and labor employment. The results show that ‘government regulations’ have a strong and significantly adverse impact on sales revenue performance. Furthermore, ‘awareness of source of funds’ is found to significantly amplify sales revenue, and profit performance. Government support is significant to growth in labor employment, sales revenue and profit. However, ‘government regulations’ have a consistently negative influence on performance, even when using different indicators. Consequently, Cameroon should provide a more conducive environment for entrepreneurship to flourish and for small firm sales revenue, profit and employment to grow through the simplification or removal of unnecessary regulations and a provision of greater financial support.

This paper investigates entry motivation of nascent entrepreneurs and their post-entry performance in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The study estimates the effect of being a nascent opportunity/necessity entrepreneur on three business-performance variables — firm growth, exports and innovation using regression analysis and control for time, country and sector effects. The data come from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Adult Population Survey (APS) for Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The results show that opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurial start-up motivation tends to be related to a superior post-entry firm performance. In addition, personal and firm characteristics influence post-entry firm performance including gender, education, household income, number of owners, firm age and number of workers at start-up.

Although a large body of literature deals with the concept of globalization, the study of the relationship between globalization and entrepreneurship is an unchartered territory. We look at data from eighteen Latin American and Caribbean countries over a fifteen-year time span. Our findings indicate that de facto economic, social, trade and interpersonal globalization are negatively related to female and male entrepreneurial activities. De facto political globalization is the only category of globalization this study finds to be related positively to entrepreneurial activity (male and female), which implies policymaking may be a viable manner to encourage entrepreneurial activities. Political shifts to encourage females to undertake entrepreneurial activities can be seen across the globe.

Availability of bank financing has been a matter of serious concern for start-up enterprises. Various reasons for non-availability of bank financing by these entities have been studied in the past; however, the role of bankers’ leadership styles has not been explored well. Although leadership in the banking sector is well researched, studies on influence of leadership styles in decisions made by bankers on providing loans to start-up entrepreneurs are non-existent. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find out if three leadership styles — i.e. transformational, transactional and laissez-faire — influence bankers while they make a decision on providing a loan to a start-up entrepreneur. The findings of this paper indicate that, out of three leadership styles, transformational leadership style has a significant influence on decisions made by bankers on loans to start-up entrepreneurs while transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles did not have a significant influence on bankers.